High speed serial data designers are required to design robust and reliable serial data receivers to meet required Bit Error Rates (BER) for specific conditions. Physical channels between serial data transmitters and receivers, such as Printed Circuit Board (PCB) traces, cables, connectors and the like, cause loss of high frequency components in a high speed serial data signal due to skin effects, dielectric loss and the like. The net effect of this leads to Inter Symbol Interference (ISI). The transmission path of physical channels are preferably characterized by S-Parameter responses acquired using a Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) or the like. The S-Parameter characteristics of physical channel transmission paths are sets of S-Parameters for a series of discrete frequencies which are stored as Touchstone files. Based on the number of ports in a network representing a physical channel transmission path, various combinations of S-Parameters are measured.
An equivalent response filter can be derived from the S-Parameters in a physical channel transmission path Touchstone file to generate the effects of the physical channel transmission path. Serial data may be generated using this filter to measure the performance of the serial data receiver. It may be necessary for a designer to change the physical channel or modify the parameters of the physical channel, such as the length of the PCB trace, cable length, connector type and the like, to increase the performance of the serial data receiver. This requires a designer to measure the modified physical channel to characterize the S-Parameters of the modified transmission path. Characterizing the S-Parameters of a physical channel transmission path using a VNA is generally a time consuming activity. Moreover, the desired physical channel may not be available due to the non-availability of the components for the modified physical channel (e.g. a modified PCB with a new trace length).